🔗 Share this article

The resident Tomas Anez Dos Santos toiled in a modest glade far in the Peruvian Amazon when he detected movements coming closer through the dense forest.

It dawned on him that he had been surrounded, and halted.

“A single individual was standing, aiming with an arrow,” he states. “Somehow he detected that I was present and I started to run.”

He had come confronting members of the Mashco Piro. For a long time, Tomas—residing in the modest village of Nueva Oceania—had been practically a neighbor to these itinerant people, who reject interaction with foreigners.

A recent report by a human rights organisation states there are no fewer than 196 of what it calls “remote communities” left globally. The group is considered to be the largest. It claims a significant portion of these communities might be eliminated in the next decade if governments don't do further actions to defend them.

It argues the greatest dangers stem from timber harvesting, mining or operations for crude. Isolated tribes are highly at risk to common illness—consequently, the study notes a risk is caused by interaction with evangelical missionaries and social media influencers in pursuit of attention.

In recent times, Mashco Piro people have been appearing to Nueva Oceania more and more, as reported by residents.

This settlement is a angling community of seven or eight households, located high on the shores of the Tauhamanu waterway in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon, 10 hours from the nearest town by watercraft.

This region is not recognised as a safeguarded reserve for uncontacted groups, and timber firms function here.

Tomas reports that, sometimes, the noise of industrial tools can be detected continuously, and the tribe members are witnessing their woodland disturbed and ruined.

In Nueva Oceania, residents state they are divided. They dread the tribal weapons but they also have deep respect for their “relatives” dwelling in the jungle and want to defend them.

“Permit them to live in their own way, we must not alter their traditions. For this reason we maintain our separation,” explains Tomas.

Inhabitants in Nueva Oceania are anxious about the damage to the community's way of life, the danger of conflict and the possibility that loggers might expose the community to sicknesses they have no resistance to.

While we were in the village, the Mashco Piro made their presence felt again. Letitia, a woman with a toddler daughter, was in the woodland picking food when she noticed them.

“There were shouting, cries from others, many of them. Like there was a crowd calling out,” she told us.

This marked the first time she had met the Mashco Piro and she escaped. Subsequently, her thoughts was still pounding from terror.

“Since there are timber workers and firms cutting down the forest they're running away, possibly because of dread and they come in proximity to us,” she stated. “We are uncertain what their response may be with us. This is what frightens me.”

Two years ago, two loggers were confronted by the tribe while catching fish. One man was struck by an bow to the gut. He recovered, but the other man was located deceased after several days with nine puncture marks in his body.

The administration follows a strategy of no engagement with remote tribes, making it forbidden to initiate encounters with them.

The policy began in the neighboring country after decades of lobbying by community representatives, who saw that early interaction with secluded communities resulted to entire groups being eliminated by illness, destitution and hunger.

In the 1980s, when the Nahau people in the country came into contact with the world outside, half of their people succumbed within a few years. A decade later, the Muruhanua community faced the similar destiny.

“Secluded communities are extremely at risk—epidemiologically, any contact may transmit illnesses, and even the most common illnesses could wipe them out,” states Issrail Aquisse from a tribal support group. “From a societal perspective, any interaction or disruption may be extremely detrimental to their existence and survival as a society.”

For those living nearby of {